Ready Set Rocket Co-Hosts Summit on Innovation in Financial Services

While the financial industry has spent the past decade dealing with mergers, the financial crisis and meeting regulatory requirements, other industries have embraced the digital revolution. In choosing to evolve along with the shifting consumer landscape, these sectors have optimized their processes to better serve them.

As confidence in banks and financial advisors has continued to erode, many financial institutions have been faced with re-evaluating the way they market, promote and offer products and services to a new generation of digitally native consumers. As new financial startups (LendingClub, FutureAdvisor) and the big Internet companies (Apple, Google, Facebook) have entered the financial services space, “too big to fail” has become “too big to evolve.”

During the summit, industry experts examined this cultural and technological shift, the innovation required for an evolution in banking and what smart financial institutions have done to catch up and ultimately win back their customers.

Beginning with remarks from H. Fenwick Huss, Willem Kooyker Dean at Baruch College, and closing with President of Interbrand, Tom Zara, the event also featured commentary from the following honored guests:

Ana Valuenzuela, Associate Professor of Marketing, Head of Baruch Consumer Research Lab Baruch College

Split into three panels — “The New Financial Consumer, “Innovations in FinTech” and “A 5 Year Roadmap” — these industry insiders provided invaluable insight on current issues and future solutions.

In “The Financial Consumer,” Bob Verrico explained that “The new consumer has different expectations. They require services that suit their needs and the ‘right’ content.” The overarching theme centered around trust, building relationships and transparency in order to reach the 70-year-old investor and the 22-year-old Millennial investor.

Putting on his VC hat in “Innovation in FinTech,” Vipin Chamakkala told it like it is: “Millennials don’t trust financial services companies. And they all have smartphones.” Beyond Millennials, a group mentioned during the summit, Andrea Turner Moffitt spoke to the challenges female investors experience in the space. From APIs to cloud services, panel two brushed the surface of what’s now and what’s next.

Looking to the future in “A 5 Year Roadmap,” Conner McGee pointed out that “Communication will be huge for innovation: real-time interactions and feedback for consumers.” In panel three, “change” was the overarching theme. The panelists commonly referred to “nimble” companies and how critical it is to be agile in order to adapt to rapid change.

We want to thank our partners, our panelists and all of those of who helped make this such a successful event! Video footage from the event will be available soon for those who weren’t able to attend.